


Come Back To Me

by agentlemons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergent, F/M, Harold the Hungry Space Rock is back, I'm sorry., More tags to be added as story continues, season 2/3 AU, unenthusiastic yays
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7332493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentlemons/pseuds/agentlemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a perfect plan. Fitz was going to take her out to dinner. They were finally going to work through what this was blossoming to be. They were going to talk about everything that's set them apart in the past. It could end up to be a disaster or end up to be something much better.</p><p>If only it hadn't turned to a disaster before it even began.</p><p>A season 2/3 AU. Jemma is sucked up into the monolith yet her absence stretches just a little bit longer than expected.</p><p>***<br/>Shoutout to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentsofSuperwholocked/profile">AgentsofSuperwholocked</a> for giving me this prompt in my <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6119771">Fitzsimmons Drabbles</a> series<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back To Me

**Author's Note:**

> It's super exciting to be starting up a new story, and one I'll be more devoted to and longer than what I usually write.  
> Every chapters beginning will have lyrics from a song from the artist Daughtry that best suits the chapter's content  
> Super HUGE thank you to [midnightangel414](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightAngel414/profile) (aka fortheloveoffitz on tumblr) for beta-ing this story, as well as double beta-ing this first chapter, haha. You're the best!

 

_And I’m gonna say what I need to say_

_And hope to god that it don’t scare you away_

_Don’t wanna be misunderstood_

_But I’m starting to believe that_

_This could be the start of something good_

“Start of Something Good”

 

The sound of fat raindrops falling on the roof was the only noise present in the containment room. It was by no means a discomforting noise. She stops her current activities to stand, with her eyes closed, and listen to the sound of each pitter-patter on the steel. Just the noise of it alone brought a wave of nostalgia upon Jemma, reminding her vaguely of summers as a child running through the rain (to which she always received a cold the next day as a consequence for her action).

 

A smile forms on her lips as she savors the memory, swallowing it whole to always keep it hidden in her heart. It was one of the few puzzle pieces of her childhood that she remembered with a fondness that was enough to choke her.

 

She opens her eyes, resuming her work, and makes a mental note to ask Coulson for a little leave time so she could go visit her parents. It’d been a while - years even - since she even contacted them. It was only fair.

 

But then Jemma’s mind drifts into a new thought: asking Fitz to come back with her. It was an idea she would’ve dismissed as crazy a matter of weeks ago but the least she could do was ask.

 

_What’s the worst that could happen? He says no?_

 

She assumes he would say anything _but_ no, especially with the conversation they had just hours prior.

***

**A few hours earlier...**

She’s wringing her hands restlessly as she travels slowly down the hall. They had all returned from the mission hours ago with a new friend – Lincoln, she remembers – in tow. It was a long, nerve-wracking day. In fact, Jemma has been pacing back in forth in the lab for a majority of it, nervous as hell that her best friend wouldn’t come back to her. Then she spends a little while just staring through open glass at Hunter and Bobbi and realization hits her deep in her gut.

 

She wants that with Fitz.

 

Not necessarily the situation they were in; because no one would ever wish to be shot and clinging to life with their loved one by their side. But she wants someone to _love_ – and that’s exactly what she feels for Fitz. That’s what she _wants_ with Fitz. She wants everything that comes with being with someone and the desire burns so low and deep in her gut that it knocks the breath out of her lungs.

 

But she knows that if she wants to have something like that with him they have a lot to talk about.

 

She knocks on his door firmly, loud enough to catch his attention but not loud enough to startle him. She waits a few moments and in the meantime focuses on the chipped paint of the door frame while formulating what she wants to say.

 

Fitz opens his door slowly, as if unsure to open it up to anyone at all. When she catches his eyes she sees them tense up slightly and that’s when she remembers the last conversation they had. How she had sprung their past and his feelings on him before he left for a mission that neither of them even knew if he would come back from. She almost wants to run away from his door, hide away in her room, isolate herself from the world for a little while until her mind and heart calms down again. But the pleading look in his eyes is what keeps her planted right in her spot.

 

Jemma swallows dryly and almost coughs at the lack of moisture in her throat. Fitz’s good hand flies from the door he was holding to his neck, scratching it nervously. “Do you want to, um…come in?” he asks, his voice slightly wavering, but Jemma dismisses it.

 

She cautiously walks past him into his room, which was still in the same state of disorder that she’s always seen. He shuts the door behind her, but keeps his hand on the handle as if he himself wants to leave the room.

 

“Jemma-“

 

“Fitz-“

 

They each stop talking at the same time, pleading the other to speak first. Fitz ends up speaking first.

 

“I think we should talk.” His voice was definitely shaking now, as if trying to hold back emotion. Anger, sadness, regret, guilt; to be honest Jemma could hear all of those in his voice.

 

She opens her mouth to speak but ultimately ends up just nodding instead. If she were to say anything in that moment, her voice would break and so would the dam behind her eyes that was already threatening to shatter.

 

She turns away from his piercing gaze to sit on his bed when he speaks again. “I don’t regret what I said,” he said, slowly, as if each word was an emphasis on how he felt. “Just wanted you to know that.”

 

Jemma takes a deep breath and turns slowly, tilting her head to the side when she makes eye contact once again. “I know…you shouldn’t,” she breathes, a shaky smile making its way to her lips. Fitz nods in light of her answer, and looks down at the floor, his hands resting on his hips in that position that Jemma always found ridiculous.

 

“It’s just that…I shouldn’t have said something like that in the situation we were in. My words were spoken on pure fear that I would die before I could ever say them. And I shouldn’t have sprung them on you but…” he stops, shaking his head, his next words coming out with such a slowness, as if he’s carefully planning each one,” I can’t take back what I said.”

 

He pauses.

 

“Because if I didn’t say it then I would’ve never said it at all.”

 

She dares to step closer; she instantly regrets it.

 

“And why is that?”

 

He looks at her and his eyes are cold. Colder than she’s seen them before. “Because…I have trouble speaking. With my words. How I feel. I-I…” He knocks over the closest thing next to him (a standing coat-rack) and the contents go flying. Jemma flinches, her eyes instinctively shutting on the noise it makes. “I’ve always had trouble saying what I’ve wanted to. And even after…all of this” he continues, motioning at his head with his index finger, “I’ve become worse.”

 

Jemma shakes her head gently. “But…you’ll become better. It’ll just take some time-“

 

“It’s been over a year, Jemma! And I’m not better!” His voice was raising and Jemma matches the volume of her own.

 

“But you are, Fitz! I’ve seen it! You are much better than you were. You just have trouble seeing it yourself.”

 

“Oh, really?” he asks, almost in a mocking tone. “And how would you know anything about how I’m doing, seeing as you left while I was struggling through it?”

 

Jemma inhales a sharp breath, the words wrapping around her head and squeezing her chest. She stares at Fitz and Fitz stares back at her, the magnitude between their eye contact so strong that it could shake the whole building. They would just blame it on Skye in the end.

 

Jemma is the first to break away. “That’s not fair, Fitz,” she says in a strangled voice. “I tried to explain to you why I left and you wouldn’t hear of it.”

 

“Because there was nothing to discuss, Jemma! I just – just woke up one morning, and all you left me was a note saying that you were leaving to go see your Mum and your Dad, with no explanation, no reason why, no nothing!”

 

“I left because I wanted you to get better!” she ultimately screams out at him, her breath coming out in shaky pants as she stands helplessly in the middle of his room. Tears begin to pool in her eyes and she tries her best to keep them contained. She turns away from him, walking over to his neatly made bed and sitting on top of it, smoothing her hands out on her lap.

 

“I only left because I felt like if I did you would finally get better,” she says quietly, her head bowed and focused on her lap instead of the man in front of her. “It was stupid and foolish of me, to walk out on you like that, without so much as a formal goodbye.”

 

Looking up at him, moisture forming tracks down her cheeks, she sighs, “But I didn’t – couldn’t face you the day I decided to leave. Hell, it was hard to be around you after I was confirmed to leave for Hydra. You have no idea how difficult it was watching you struggling with everyday things and knowing that one morning you’d wake up and I wouldn’t be there for you,” she confesses, wiping the tears from her cheeks and sniffling quietly.

 

“Not as difficult as waking to see the person you just laid your feelings out for gone and you thinking it was because you ruined their friendship by being honest,” Fitz mumbles.

 

“But you didn’t, Fitz,” Jemma cries, almost choking on her words. “I just…” she inhales deeply and stands again, walking towards him. “It was all my fault, as usual. I couldn’t process what you said and I couldn’t just tell you something that would eventually hurt you in the end.”

 

“So you left and hurt me anyway.”

 

“I didn’t intend to hurt you,” she said, keeping her hands by her sides rather than trying to reach out for him, “I only wanted you to get better and I felt like when I was around you weren’t healing the right way.”

 

He huffs. “And do you think your being gone was any better?”

 

He moves closer to her, invading her space, and she would’ve moved further away if she could move at all. “Jemma…” he begins, his eyes squinting shut to think of the words.  Jemma could clearly see the anguish in his facial expression. “I uh…I-“ he stutters, anger welling in his face. But before he can turn away she places a hand on his upper arm.

 

“It’s okay, Fitz. Take your time.”

 

He sighs loudly and his warm breath hits her cheeks reminding her of their close proximity. “When you were gone it was as if you never left.”

 

She searches his eyes for a deeper explanation only  met with stunning blue eyes that were shining with unshed tears. “What?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

 

He scratches the back of his neck at his shorter curls and looks down. “Ah, yeah. I-I saw you. Here. While you were at Hydra.”

 

“You mean as in a hallucination?” she fearfully ponders, dreading the answer that was bound to come off his lips.

 

He doesn’t say anything; but the expression he gives her and the way he hangs his head is enough of an answer for her.

 

“I don’t know when she showed up,” he began to say, backing away from Jemma to create a bit more space between them. “I was working one morning and I needed the right word to finish my sentence, and you – she – was right there. Giving me the word. And I don’t know why, I just went along with it, I guess. Thinking that it was actually you by my side. I was healing, you know? Just getting out of a coma and I see the girl who almost jumped out of the plane that one day. She was wearing that same outfit, you know?” His rambling thoughts were almost too much for her to catch up with but she still listens carefully at his telling of the story. “Anyway. I s-started to believe it was the real you. At first. But then she started to say some things that only I knew. And that’s when I realized that my subconscious made you up in order to help me heal.

 

He pauses.

 

“At first, I was so mad at myself. Wanting to hide from the hallucination. But she just followed me wherever I went. So I began to pretend like it was actually you. Everyone thought I was crazy. I could feel the shift in how they talked and dealt with me. Like I was a child. Ready to break.” Fitz takes a break to breathe deeply and Jemma takes advantage of this moment to swallow everything he’s said. He’s never told her any of this; and a part of her is upset with that fact, being that they’re supposed to tell each other everything. But then again, they haven’t been on the best of terms since she came back.

 

“Did you ever see me – her – when I came back?”

 

Fitz shakes his head. “No. She left a little bit before you returned. Which was why-”

 

“-When you asked if it was really me, you meant-”

 

“-I wanted to see if it was you or if she came back.”

 

Jemma nods, looking anywhere else but Fitz’s face. It was hard to process everything he just said, to think that her leaving had caused him to hallucinate a rendition of herself in order to cope with his temporary loss. The situation itself pained her to consider at all. If she thought it was hell working undercover at Hydra, it was no match to what Fitz faced every day while she was gone.

 

A silence appears in the air once he stops talking. It hangs around the both of them, propelling them to continue the conversation, and Jemma is the first to jump at the opportunity.

 

“I’m sorry I left, Fitz,” she whispers.

 

He chuckles softly. “And I’m sorry I made up a more annoying version of you while you were away.”

 

She scoffs and hits him on the shoulder. “Are you saying I’m annoying?”

 

“No, of course not,” he points out, his hands flying into his hips in that ridiculous pose again. “I just said that the hallucination was more annoying than you.”

 

Jemma raises an eyebrow at him and he groans into his hands. “I didn’t help myself out at all, did I?”

 

She laughs, shaking her head, but then realizes that he can’t see her because his head was still in his hands. She steps forward into his space and pulls his hands away from his face slowly, cocking her head to the side as his eyes set to focus on her own. When she releases them by his side she’s surprised when he insists on placing them around her back instead. He pulls her closer into his embrace and she in turn wraps her arms around his shoulders. Breathing him in deeply, she sighs. It isn’t exactly what she was expecting from him especially after their fight, but it’s was better than her worst-case scenario.

 

“Jemma,” he mumbles into her hair and it takes her a moment to register the wavering in his tone again. She pulls back slowly and looks into his eyes, shocked to see them burning with an emotion – and she’s aware of the emotion they hold – that she’s only seen once from him before.

 

“Yeah?” she whispers, trying to push down the lump in her throat and failing.

 

He opens his mouth to say something and then snaps it shut, as she’s witnessed him do a thousand times before, and she almost yells at him to say whatever is on his damn mind for once.

 

“I don’t like it when we fight,” he finally says.

 

“Me neither,” she agrees, shaking her head. “Let’s agree that from now on we’ll talk our way out of arguments instead of ignoring it all together. Or else we’ll be stuck in this situation again.”

 

He sighs. “We’re the worst communicators ever.”

 

“You’re not wrong.” Jemma untangles herself from his grip, as much as she regrets it.   


“Do you still feel the same way?” she suddenly blurts out and mentally curses herself out for being so forward.

 

He freezes in place and she immediately feels like she’s overdone it. Again. She’s said too much and now he’s going to regret what he proclaimed to her over a year ago in the bottom of the ocean. He’s going to say no and – well she doesn’t know exactly what she’ll do if he says no.

 

“I know full well of my feelings toward you, Fitz,” she continues, “I just need to know where you stand in all of this mess.”

 

Fitz puts some distance between them by pacing back and forth, his eyes focusing not on her but rather on his hands that were tangled in each other. “How exactly do you feel, Jemma?” he asks slowly, as if each word were intended to either make or break their friendship.

 

She pauses for a moment then finally says, in a quiet shaking voice, “I want to be with you.”

 

That’s enough to make Fitz stop pacing and finally look at her.

 

“And I know you probably don’t feel the same way anymore,” she continues, looking intently into his eyes, “Especially after everything I’ve done to hurt you. But I thought you deserve to know exactly how I feel. I know it took me a really long time to come to terms with how I felt but I’ve finally figured everything out. I realized just how much of my life revolved around you and how if you were taken out of my life, how empty and incomplete it’d be. It’s taken me ten years to realize just how much you mean to me, as more than that, and I want to explore that with you. I want all of it.” Jemma takes a deep breath in as she finishes, realizing that she didn’t even breathe during her little ramble.

 

When she focuses on Fitz, he’s frozen in place. His eyes haven’t left hers at all during her little speech and she sees that look in his eyes again. The same look she saw when he first confessed his feelings for her. He smiles, and moves closer to her. “Do you really mean that?”

 

She can’t say anything, so she just nods.

 

“I’ve never stopped wanting to be with you, Jemma. Even after everything that happened,” he pauses. “I even talked to Mack and Hunter about you, but despite how mad I was about everything that happened, I still couldn’t shake my feelings for you.”

 

Another pause. Then, “Even if you were an imaginary pest looking over my shoulder every day.”

 

Jemma hits him again on the shoulder, rolling her eyes as she does so.

 

Before she can say anything else on the shift in their relationship a pinging noise comes from her phone. Groaning, she pulls it out of her pocket and glances at the screen. “And on that note, I must go see Coulson,” she declares, sighing in disappointment. “He wants me to work on the monolith and try to figure out as much as I can on it. Should be fun.” She deposits her phone in her pocket again and adds, “And boring.”

 

Exhaling, she looks up at Fitz again. “We’ll continue this later, yeah?” he asks, hope written all over his face. It makes Jemma’s heart swell with adoration at the man, who is utterly adorable when he makes that face. She nods, of course, and walks past him out the door but not before giving him another glance before walking down the hall.

***

**Present...**

 “Jemma?”

 

She snaps quickly out of her thoughts, tucking that talk down into her memory as she turns at the call of her name, turning to see the man she was just thinking about peeking out from behind the glass door. She smiles. “Can I come in?”

 

“Of course,” she responds, trying not to seem too eager but wanting to sound at least a little excited to see him. Besides, she hasn’t seen him for the past four hours and who wouldn’t be excited to see their ~~more than~~ best friend?

 

He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, the door making a creaking sound as it closes. Jemma notices that he’s wringing his hands as he comes closer and a bit of curiosity creeps into her mind. Not the good kind, either.

 

She’s thinking up so many bad case scenarios that she doesn’t even hear what he says. “What was that, Fitz?” At the call of his name he looks up at her and suddenly all of those scenarios fly out the window.

 

“I was thinking that you should maybe take a break from working, for a little bit,” he repeats.

 

She cocks her head to the side, questionably. “Oh.”

 

He almost loses his balance but catches it on the edge of the box that contained the blasted monolith. “I was just…suggesting that you take a break. You’ve been in here for a long time. Or I could um…bring you something. Like something to eat. I’m sure you haven’t really eaten much today. Or maybe you could come with me to get something, maybe?”

 

She almost laughs at the way he was tumbling over his words, almost shyly. She gets the idea regardless. “Fitz,” she says, her voice affectionate, “Are you trying to ask me on a date?”

 

He nods and she smiles warmly. “That sounds nice.”

 

They’re both quiet for a quick moment before Fitz claps his hands together. “Well, um, you should come find me when you’re done here. I’ll run a few options by you f-for that.” He turns around and walks towards the door again leaving a smiling Jemma in his wake.

 

She turns back towards the contained monolith, beaming radiantly. _A date. With Fitz. Who would’ve figured?_

 

In fact, tonight would be the perfect time to ask him to come back to Sheffield with her, especially if they are…what they are now.

 

She finishes up her work and glances at the monolith before leaving only to see the door ajar. _Hmm, that’s odd_ , thinking to herself as she reaches to close it. She figures Fitz probably opened it by accident when he lost his balance. As she pushes it shut, however, the door busts open as the monolith melts pushing Jemma to the floor and sucking her up into the rock, swallowing her screams.

 

Everything fades to black.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> And there is the first chapter! Again, super thank you to everyone who's liked [Counting](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7149839), as that is a companion piece to this story (and will probably become an actual chapter in this story eventually)  
> Kudos and comments always appreciated and always put a smile on my face :)


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